US lawyer and professor Alan Dershowitz told i24NEWS on Tuesday that he was taking on the Dee family case and vowed to make CNN News pay, as Rabbi Leo Dee pursues a legal case against the news agency and its host Christiane Amanpour for her phrasing about the terror attack that took the lives of his wife and two daughters.

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"This is part of a pattern that CNN and Amanpour have engaged in over a decade or more," Dershowitz said, noting that he was taking on the case pro bono. "Amanpour constantly creates a moral equivalence between terrorists, who murder people in cold blood, and innocent victims. This was not a slip of the tongue, not an honest mistake."

The lawyer referred to findings by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America NGO, which he said "documented a long pattern by CNN and Amanpour of constantly citing against Israel and trying to create a moral equivalence between innocent victims of terrorism."

"They are not mistakes, they are part of a deliberate pattern. There's no moral equivalence between people who shoot families in cold blood and people who suffer as a result of terrorism. So let's wait to see what Amanpour says, not in a scripted apology, but under my cross-examination," he said. "All that has to be proved is that the family suffered emotional distress and harm, and we will be able to prove that.

"The harm that was suffered from this horrible statement by Amanpour… will become the subject of a significant lawsuit against CNN. "Amanpour hasn't apologized for years of misleading the world about the Israel-Palestine conflict and about terrorism. They have suffered enormous harm, and you can't take that back. An apology doesn't undo defamation."

The i24NEWS interview with Dershowitz came a day after Leo Dee spoke with the channel about his efforts to obtain an apology from Amanpour, who referred to the April murders by a Palestinian terrorist of the rabbi's wife and daughters – Lucy, Maya, and Rina – as a "shootout."

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Hours after Monday's interview with Dee, Amanpour made a short on-air statement saying she "misspoke" and that she wrote to the rabbi "to apologize and make sure that he knows that we apologize for any further pain that may have caused him."

But Dee responded by saying that the apology was "not worth the paper it's printed on" and demanded not just a public apology, but most importantly "that they [CNN] change their attitude toward Israel."

"They continue to tell anti-truths about Israel," he continued, adding that he was consulting with legal experts about pursuing a case against the news agency.

This article was first published by i24NEWS.

The post Dershowitz says he'll take Dee family case, vows to hold CNN accountable appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

CNN chief international anchor, Christiane Amanpour, apologized Monday for saying that Lucy Dee and her two daughters, Rina and Maia, were killed in a "shootout" with terrorists.

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"And just a note," the anchor said 22 minutes and 50 seconds into her May 22 show "Amanpour." "On April 10th, I referred to the murders of a British-Israeli family, Lucy Dee and Maia and Rina Dee, the wife and daughters of Rabbi Leo Dee. During that live interview, I misspoke and said that they were killed in a 'shootout' instead of a 'shooting.' I have written to Rabbi Dee to apologize and make sure that he knows that we apologize for any further pain that may have caused him."

SUCCESS: Following our campaign for a public apology, @CNN's @amanpour says live on air: "I have written to Rabbi Leo Dee to apologize and make sure that he knows that we apologize for any further pain that may have caused him."

See the full story here: https://t.co/ppmGQL5927 pic.twitter.com/PxWeyB0id0

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 22, 2023

The statement offered no apology to viewers, and it did not explain why it took 12 days to correct.

Honest Reporting called the correction a "success," noting that it publicly called for Amanpour to issue the correction on May 11. "Upon seeing our exposé, Lucy's widower, Rabbi Leo Dee, issued a statement exclusively to Honest Reporting, echoing our call for an immediate apology. That tweet has racked up a further 137,000 views, indicating significant public outrage at Amanpour and CNN," the group stated.

Bereaved father and widower Rabbi Leo Dee demands public apology from @CNN

"They said they [wife and daughters] were killed, and not brutally murdered by an evil Palestinian terrorist funded by Iran, and it's the typical 'CNNism' where they are trying to do a comparison between… pic.twitter.com/YexKCNPY54

— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) May 22, 2023

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach told JNS that Amanpour was "forced to capitulate and retract" her and CNN's "nauseating lie" less than 24 hours after Dee announced – during the memorial lecture for Boteach's father Yoav – that he planned to sue CNN for $1.3 billion "for defaming and desecrating the memory of his martyred wife and two daughters."

"The lesson here is that the Jewish community must never again allow the defamation of its good name and character," Boteach said. "Let all our enemies know that this is just the first of many actions we will be taking to ensure that the Jewish people and the State of Israel will never again (be) defamed. Antisemites beware."

Prof. Alan Dershowitz to i24NEWS: I am taking on @CNN and @amanpour despite apology to Rabbi Leo Dee

'This is part of a pattern that CNN and Amanpour have engaged in for over a decade....let's wait to hear what Amanpour says under my cross examination '

Catch the full… pic.twitter.com/EEZgIAe5Ja

— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) May 23, 2023

The apology came just hours after Dee said he might sue CNN over its coverage of the terrorist attack. Speaking with the international outlet i24NEWS he said, "They said they [wife and daughters] were killed, and not brutally murdered by an evil Palestinian terrorist funded by Iran, and it's the typical 'CNNism' where they are trying to do a comparison between the victim and the terrorist...Christiane wrote me a very brief email apologizing for any misunderstanding caused by her calling it a 'shootout'... When you make a statement on prime time TV and then apologize in an email to a single person, it has a fraction of the impact."

 Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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CNN veteran anchorwoman Christiane Amanpour apologized during her Monday show for comments equating the events of Kristallnacht with US President Donald Trump's presidency.

Her exposition caused a storm of controversy, including a demand from Israel to issue a retraction.

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"I observed the 82nd anniversary of Kristallnacht, as I often do. It is the event that began the horrors of the Holocaust. I also noted President Trump's attacks on history, facts, knowledge, and truth," Amanpour explained.

"I should not have juxtaposed the two thoughts. Hitler and his evil stand alone, of course, in history," she added. "I regret any pain my statement may have caused."

She added: "My point was to say how democracy can potentially slip away, and how we must always zealously guard our democratic values."

In the opening segment of her regular daily affairs program on Thursday, Amanpour spoke of the anniversary of Kristallnacht – the pogrom attack on Jews in Germany and Austria in early November 1938 – and how the Nazis upended human civilization, which led to genocide.

She warned that Trump's criticism of the media and his legal efforts to contest the recent election was similar to the Nazi attacks on intellectuals and Jews during that event in 1938.

"This week 82 years ago, Kristallnacht happened," Amanpour said in the Thursday monologue. "It was the Nazis' warning shot across the bow of our human civilization that led to genocide against a whole identity, and in that tower of burning books, it led to an attack on fact, knowledge, history and truth. After four years of a modern-day assault on those same values by Donald Trump, the Biden-Harris team pledges a return to norms, including the truth."

Amanpour was heavily criticized for drawing this comparison, leading to calls for her removal by both Jews and non-Jews who were shocked at the ease at which one would compare Nazi Germany to what has been widely considered to be a very pro-Israel administration in Washington.

Diaspora Affairs Minister Omer Yankelevich sent a letter to CNN president Jeffrey Zucker on Sunday, demanding Amanpour issue an "immediate and public apology" for the "unacceptable comparison."

"We find hereby the false equivalence made between the actions of a sitting US president and the atrocities of the Kristallnacht pogroms which were carried out by the Nazis 82 years ago belittling of the immense tragedy of the Holocaust," Yankelevich wrote.

Following the anchorwoman's comments, Ben Habib, a former European Parliament member for the Brexit Party in Britain, said on Twitter: "This is @camanpour on @CNN comparing Trump's tenure to Nazi Germany. How the hell is this sort of prejudice tolerated on mainstream media? Third-rate rubbish."

The Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council, an organization that defends Jewish interests wrote on  Twitter: "Despicable. @camanpour compares verbal fact-checking of a POTUS to a Nazi pogrom in which dozens of Jews were murdered," the Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council, a small group representing Haredi Jewish interests, wrote on Twitter.

CNN has clashed with the Trump administration repeatedly over the past four years due to the latter's criticism that the network's coverage is biased against him.

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